Toolkit FAQs

The TSBM is a framework that public health and clinical scientists can use to measure the impact of their work in four distinct domains:

• Clinical & Medical benefits (procedures, guidelines, tools)
• Community & Public Health benefits (health activities, care, promotion)
• Economic benefits (commercial products, patents, financial savings)
• Policy & Legislative benefits (advisory activities, organizational and public policies)

The Translating for Impact Toolkit is a set of tools to accompany the TSBM. The Toolkit helps you consider and integrate impact throughout the research process by planning for, tracking, and demonstrating the impact of their work. It includes nine easy-to-use tools that you can apply to a single project, your complete body of work, or the work of programs and centers.

Individuals or teams of clinical and public health researchers working together on a specific project or within a program or center can use the toolkit to:

• Plan their career agenda
• Write a grant
• Secure promotion or tenure
• Form a community partnership
• Encourage others to use their innovation or extend your work
• Succinctly describe their benefits to inform policy change

Program and institutional leaders can also use the toolkit to:

• Train junior researchers in clinical and translational science
• Inform and influence promotion and tenure decisions
• Evaluate longer-term impact of research portfolios

We recommend convening a group of people to complete the tools to ensure multiple perspectives and support equity, including the communities or population groups who could be impacted by the research.

The toolkit includes nine tools divided into three steps that are designed to help you integrate impact from start to finish of your project:

PLAN for impact

• Roadmap to Impact – Map out your plan to achieve impact
• Benefits 2×2 – Identify and prioritize the benefits of your research
• Partner Mapper – Engage partners based on their influence and interests
• Team Manager – Identify team members and expertise necessary to achieve impact

TRACK progress toward indicators of impact

• Impact Tracker – Benchmark progress on metrics of impact
• Review, revisit, and retrieve information from tools in the plan step

DEMONSTRATE impact to others

• Product Navigator – Choose the impact product for your goal and audience
• Case Study Builder – Tell the story of your impact
• Impact Profile – Summarize your impact in one page
• Dissemination Planner – Share your impact products
• Review, revisit, and retrieve information from tools in the plan and track steps

No. While we recommend everyone complete the Roadmap to Impact as it lays the groundwork for all other tools and helps you to frame the entirety of your project or work, depending on your goals, you can pick and choose those tools that you believe will be most useful to you. For example, for completed projects, you may want to complete the Roadmap and then move to the tools in the demonstrate step. Whichever route you choose, don’t forget the importance of equity and inclusion.

The Translating for Impact Toolkit embeds health equity across the full research-to-impact pathway, helping teams design, implement, and evaluate projects so that benefits reach populations and communities who have historically been underserved or excluded. The toolkit encourages researchers to identify who is most likely to benefit, who may be overlooked, and what structural or contextual barriers could limit impact across groups defined by social, economic, demographic, and geographic factors. As of 2025, the Translational Science Benefits Model (TSBM) also includes 10 new equity-focused benefits, strengthening how equity-related impacts are defined and measured.

Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all approaches, the tools prompt teams to plan for equitable impact from early project stages through dissemination and real-world application. Each tool includes structured equity prompts to guide decision-making, partner engagement, and impact tracking. For example, the Partner Mapper helps teams identify which stakeholders and communities are most affected by the work and supports strategies for meaningful, reciprocal engagement throughout the project lifecycle.